


The Lord Who Doesn't Lie

by a_t_rain



Category: Henry IV - Shakespeare, SHAKESPEARE William - Works
Genre: F/M, Games
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-03
Updated: 2016-09-03
Packaged: 2018-08-12 17:10:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7942477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_t_rain/pseuds/a_t_rain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A game of <i>Le roi qui ne ment</i>, somewhere in between <i>Richard II</i> and <i>1 Henry IV</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lord Who Doesn't Lie

**Author's Note:**

  * For [speakmefair](https://archiveofourown.org/users/speakmefair/gifts).



> I am considerably indebted to Richard Firth Green's article, " _Le Roi Qui Ne Ment_ and Aristocratic Courtship."

It is Christmas at King Henry’s court, and the young folk are all playing a game called _Le roi qui ne ment_ : three of the princes, and their cousin the Duke of York, and his brother Richard Earl of Cambridge, and Anne Mortimer and her sister, and Ned Poins who is the most respectable of Prince Hal’s companions, and Poins’s sister Nell, and two of Queen Isabella’s former ladies-in-waiting, who were either feigning their sadness when the queen departed for France or feigning their mirth now. And Harry Percy.

It’s a stupid game, Harry thinks: all about problems of love, which do not interest him at all, and there are _undercurrents_ of the sort he isn’t good at.

“Whether you had rather see your beloved every day,” asks one of the ladies-in-waiting, who is the king at the moment, “but be uncertain of their love, or whether you had rather be certain of their love, but see them rarely because you are mewed up in a tower.”

“The first one, because I’d just as soon not be mewed up in a tower, if it's all the same to you,” growls Harry, who feels that the love-business is entirely irrelevant.

“I should not mind being mewed up in a tower, so long as I had books enough,” says Prince Humphrey of Gloucester, who is also a bit out of his depth in a game of _Le roi qui ne ment_ , though for different reasons.

“To be certain of his love,” says Nell Poins, “because that would make any captivity seem light.” This is the approved answer, of course, and even a country gentleman’s daughter knows it; and _because_ she is a country-gentleman’s daughter, out of place on the shifting sands of the court, she is unlikely to give anything but the approved answer. Harry resigns himself to a great deal of boredom.

“Aye,” says Ned Poins, “to be certain of his love would be best, for that is a rare blessing in this world.” He is very drunk, and probably does not notice that he has said _his_ ; nor that he is looking at Prince Hal when he says it. Prince Hal, who is _not_ as drunk as he pretends to be, does notice. Perhaps, Harry thinks, some interesting things can be learnt from this game after all.

“I had rather see him every day, and not be too certain,” says the other lady-in-waiting, “for love grows stale with over-much certainty.”

“I would say, rather,” says Anne Mortimer, “that love grows stale with over-much _sight_.”

“I say as she says,” says Richard, who is trying to impress Anne. “‘Tis the soul, and not the eyes that matter.”

“And I do _not_ say as she says,” says Prince Hal carelessly, “for ‘love grows stale with over-much sight’ sounds too much like something the-king-my-father would say. Sight, please, and plenty of it.”

“I say sight,” says Richard’s brother the Duke of York, “for there is no certainty nor fidelity in the world; ‘tis an illusion.” He ought to know, Harry thinks; everyone knows he would have been executed for a traitor, were he not the king’s own cousin.

“It is because certainty and fidelity are rare, that they are precious, and ought to be preferred over the mere pleasure of the eyes,” says Prince John of Lancaster sententiously. Prince John says everything sententiously. Harry wishes they were holding a tournament instead of playing a silly love-game, so he could knock Prince John off his horse.

“I think,” says the other Mortimer girl unexpectedly, “that Lord Percy has made a very good point. I should not like to venture an answer without knowing _why_ I am in this tower, and whether I am like to be executed.”

The king judges Nell Poins’s answer to be the best, making her the new king. She gulps slightly, out of her depth among the courtiers, and chooses a question that offers little room for impropriety: _Whether beauty or wit be more desirable in a woman?_

Even _Harry_ knows the right answer to that one, although he is not much good at offering up subtle compliments to the wit of one or another lady in particular, as the other men all do.

“Beauty,” says Kate Mortimer, the only dissenting voice. “I have tried wit, and it is not enough to interest most men.”

But Harry, in spite of himself, is interested.

Nell Poins chooses Prince Hal as the new king. Flattering the Prince of Wales ought to be a safe choice, but is not, because the two ladies-in-waiting nudge each other and whisper, and Harry knows they are speculating about whether she is flirting with the prince, and whether he will make her his mistress. _She had better have chosen her brother_ , Harry thinks, and he can tell the Mortimer girl is thinking the same.

Hal flashes a wicked grin, and poses the question, “Whether you had rather possess your lover from the waist up, or the waist down?”

There is a great deal of hooting and pandemonium. Prince John blushes. The ladies-in-waiting pretend to blush. Ned Poins, who is permitted – nay, expected – to match the prince jest for outrageous jest, offers up an answer that causes more hooting: “From the waist down, for then she would love, and be silent.” No slips of the tongue, this time. The prince rewards him with another grin.

“That she would not,” says Kate Mortimer, “for the _demande_ does not say that she is _absent_ from the waist up, only that you do not _possess_ her. She might say many things without your leave.”

“Waist down,” says Harry, “she may say whatsoever she will, so long as she will bed me at the end of the day.”

The others, of course, choose the genteel, courtly answer, although there are two camps with regard to the reason why. The discussion settles into the ordinary sort of love-debate, over whether the head or the heart is the more important part when it comes to love. It occurs to Harry that if only there were a dozen Kate Mortimers in the room, _Le roi qui ne ment_ might actually become _interesting_.

* * *

“Lord Percy,” says Kate Mortimer afterward, “you play well.”

“I do not,” says Harry. For some reason, the compliment disappoints him; he had not taken her for a flatterer. “I am never chosen as king.”

“Ah, but you place yourself at a disadvantage the others have not,” says Kate, “for you never lie.”

“Isn’t that one of the rules, that you ought not to lie?” (Of course, the others all _do_ lie, since everyone lies all the time at court, and Harry wishes he were keeping Christmas on the battlefield or at least the tournament ground or _anywhere_ but here.) “Isn’t that how the game gets its name?”

“No, coxcomb, the name is ‘The _King_ Who Doesn’t Lie.’ The king is the only one who doesn’t, since he is the one posing the _demandes_.”

“Oh.” Harry has not thought of it this way, and it comes to him that Kate Mortimer is _clever_. Ordinarily he detests clever people, but he thinks he might make an exception. “And – the king of the game is the only king on earth who doesn’t lie; is that not so?”

This is close to treason, in these uncertain times; but she gives a muffled snort, and he knows she will not give him away. “It is so.”

“Whether,” he says, suddenly inspired, “a lady ought to prefer a king who lies, or a plain blunt soldier who does not.”

She smiles; a proper smile, not like the artificial simper her sister wears in Richard Earl of Cambridge’s presence. “This lady prefers the man who does not.”


End file.
